10 Bizarre Beauty Products

The lengths some people go to in the chase of beauty and youthfulness is really quite surprising. Even though we have been hearing for decades of the ridiculous-sounding matter that our ancestor did to improve their looks and laughing derisively (seriously, the Egyptians used crocodile excrement as a type of facial mask !), some of the products we use today are no less bizarre and disgusting.

This list covers 10 of the most bizarre beauty products that are in use today. Many of them can even be acquired online. While the top two items on the listing are among the most well-known contemporary beauty products, we hope you’ll see the reasoning behind their placement. In no particular ordering:

Collagen injections are used to smooth out frown line, crows feet wrinkles, and smile line as well as to give the appearance of full lip. Like Botox, this procedure is quite common but where the main ingredient comes from is just bizarre. Notwithstanding the ninth item on this listing there are two primary sources of collagen, a protein responsible for skin strength and elasticity, bovine ( cow) and human.

About three in 100 people suffer an allergic reaction to bovine-derived collagen which has motivated manufacturers to generator collagen from aborted fetuses, placentas, and donated cadavers as the probability of an allergic reaction is practically non-existent. maybe the most morally outraging generator of collagen is the rumored harvesting of collagen from executed prisoners in China, taken without the consent of the prisoner or their household and exported to the UK for socialites to shoot into their faces.

While the Botox procedure to prevent wrinkles may sound fairly familiar and cliche. If you think about what you’re having inserted into your skin, it really is quite bizarre. Botulinum toxin (bo+tox = botox) is one of the most poison naturally arising substances on the planet and the single most toxic protein.

Eating food infected with Clostridium botulinum can lead to serious food poisoning (the fatality rate is 5 to 10 %) if there is toxin present. One microgram( 1/1000000 of a gram) is lethal to human. The amounts used in cosmetic procedures are consequently very small-scale.

The neurotoxins produced by members of the cobra family of snakes (and some vipers and rattlesnakes) act on prey by blocking the nerve impulses to the muscles and inducing paralysis.

Realizing that snake venom could produce a similar effect to that of Botox, the beauty industry has come up with a synthetic form of snake venom that is applied to the face as a cream rather than injected. It is meant to be safer and less invasive. The venom that was used to create the synthetic version comes from ‘snake farms’ in Brazil where thousands of snakes are ‘milked’ for their venom.

According to manufacturers, placenta wrinkle cream deduced from bovine placentas can slow down the look of visible sign of aging by moisturizing skin and combating wrinkle. Some companies also use bush placenta (yes, budding plant have placentas!) and even human.

Claims were first constructed in the 1940s (when this notion was first sold) that the nutrient rich placenta handed off the welfare of hormones and stimulated cell growth. Since the FDA promptly ended that this constituted a medical claim, saying this became illegal in the US. The manufacturers changed these claims to say that the proteins present in the placenta moisturize the users’ skin and hair.

How dedicated are you to having smooth, shiny hair? If you’re serious enough, there’s the option (in the UK at least) to have a hairdresser massage bull semen into your scalp. The reasoning behind this “ewww” idea?

Hair is made up of protein, although essentially your hair is dead, and some proteins can help form a protective stratum around the hair. Some people envisaged it would be a good mind to market protein treatments as a way of keeping your hair healthy anyway. The supposedly ultimate generator of concentrated protein? Bull semen.

There is an old Japanese beauty secret showing its way over to the western world. Its called “uguisu no fun” or sterilized nightingale droppings. An enzyme called guanine (also added to various make up products for its pearly sheen) found in the nightingales droppings apparently does a good job of bleaching and exfoliating skin.

Kabuki actor and geishas have been using “uguisu no fun” for hundreds of years to remove make up and to keep their skin soft. The elation of distributing bird excrement on your face doesn’t come as inexpensive as a jar of Olay though. Its price is around $20 for one ounce. If you’d rather have someone else do the smearing, you can go to the Shizuka Day Spa in New York and your face will be smooth and soft for $180.

Letting blood-sucking parasites fix their slimy body to you as a detox sounds like a questionable suggestion. However, leech therapy, or hirudotherapy, has been practiced since 1020 AD for treating skin disorder and helping patients recover from surgery.

These day, leeches can be used in the treatment of varicose veins, reducing blood coagulation, and helping energize blood circulation in reattached organs that need critical blood flow. If you are more adventurous, you can follow in the footsteps of celebrities, such as Demi Moore, and travel your way to Austria to have your blood feasted on by the medicinal species of leech, Hirudo medicinalis.

If you’re willing to give the leeches a go, you might also be interested in letting a school of small-minded fish nibble the dead skin cells off your toes. The notion is that you throw your feet into a tank containing a species of carp (doctor fish) and wait 15 to 30 minutes while they feast on your calluses.

Because the fish are toothless the procedure is meant to be very safe, as they can only suck off part of dead, flaking skin. In Turkey, where the therapy originated, the fish live in natural hot springs and are a popular skin care option for the people who bath there.

This odd treatment isn’t plastered on your face, or combed through your hair, but eaten instead. Pigs feet are being marketed as an edible way to combat wrinkles by New York restaurant Hakata Tontons owner. He figures that since the tootsies of the animal contain a high quantity of collagen (which is used in anti wrinkle creams and lip injections), a person might as well eat them to gain similar benefits.

Although collagen is one of the major proteins involved in retaining skin and muscle tone, eating a dinner of animal trotters is almost certainly a less effective method of maintaining the scalpel away than simply retaining a healthy diet, exerting regularly, and remaining out of the sun.

Because snails can mend and regenerate their shells using the slime they secrete, the beauty industry is now using the slime of the common garden snail species (Helix aspersa) in beauty products. The myriad of claims for its efficacy range from getting rid of acne to improving stretch marking and scarring.

The snail secretion, which is also used by the snail to reduce friction as it proceeds, seems to have anti-bacterial in addition to antioxidant qualities. If it operates for the snail, why not throw it on your face?